Well, it took them long enough. Apple has finally acknowledged the existence of the MAC Defender trojan, and has offered removal instructions. The company has also promised a security update to Mac OS X that will block MAC Defender and its variants from working. All this information was published in the form of a support document on Apple's website. Update: Well, that was fast. A new variant of the trojan, called Mac Guard, has been discovered. Unlike previous variants, this one does not require users to enter their administrative password.

Oh-Em-G Thom is sooo anti-Apple! Why does this obvious Apple-hater get to post about Apple when Apple is truly awesome! </sarcasm>

I figured I'd just post it before somebody else did.

But seriously, it's one thing to remain tight-lipped about security holes as the other OS and software vendors tend to do, but to instruct employees to explicitly deny the existence of a trojan, even one that doesn't exploit OS design but user carelessness, is something else.

but to instruct employees to explicitly deny the existence of a trojan

They instructed Apple employees to neither confirm nor deny an issue, not to explicitly deny anything because ...

they are actually working on it.

they wanted to actually have a solution to offer when they addressed the issue. Again, the leaked memo doesn't say deny the problem it says don't talk about the problem. There's a big difference between the two.

Also, this is becoming a pretty consistent pattern. Some issue comes up having to do with Apple (antenna problems, location problems, malware problems). The technical press goes berserk, claims Apple is denying/covering up/sky is falling the issue. About a week later Apple puts out an announcement that deals with the issue.

It was only a week from start to finish forthe antenna issues? I thought the PR denial campaign lasted longer then that.

First, Apple clames perfection in it's marketing. It's magic. It's revolutionary. It's invulnerable to all but good intentions. No one ever needs AV when running osX. They paint a pretty big target on there backs.

Second, when something is found, they automatically go into a denial PR campaign. There is no issue with our antenna; oh.. sorry, there was and here's a free rubber band to fix it. Malware on our products? No such thing, oh.. wait.. let us see about fixing that.

Remember how there was no problem in the osX network stack and drivers. They denied all alegations of an issue while at the same time threatening legal action against researchers presenting evidence. Six months later they quietly slipped a driver and stack patch into the update cycle. "we're apple, perfect in every way. Pay no attention to the lawyers threatening those folks or this update to fix something that didn't exist."

How about some actually transparency and responsable disclosure on Apple's part. Let's see Apple's PR spinsters respond with "yeah, we heard about that and are looking into it now. We'll have more details soon."

The issue is not that Apple products, like any other product, ship with some bugs. It's that the marketing claims no such possability while the automatic response is a cover-up leaving the end users at risk until Apple deems it apropriate to ship a fix.

Also, this is becoming a pretty consistent pattern. Some issue comes up having to do with Apple (antenna problems, location problems, malware problems). The technical press goes berserk, claims Apple is denying/covering up/sky is falling the issue. About a week later Apple puts out an announcement that deals with the issue.

That's right. Be a good little Apple sheep and defend their actions past all point or reason. Steve Jobs has you trained well. Good boy.

You seem to forget that for a long time, Apple DID deny there was an antenna problem with the iPhone 4. In fact, to this day they have never admitted that there is a problem. Only that some customers may experience problems because of the way they hold the phone, etc. They basically provided the bumper case fix without ever admitting a problem. They were still blaming the user for holding the phone wrong. But it doesn't stop there:

* Apple denied that the early MacBook Pros had cooling problems. Then quietly released a firmware update later on that was supposed to address the issue.

* Apple denied the "hissing / whining" noise problem when the CPU was idle on early MacBook Pros. But eventually offered main-board replacements for those customers that were affected.

* Apple denied that the new 27 inch iMacs had screen problems, then released several firmware updates that were supposed to resolve the problem, but did not for many people.

* Apple claimed that the "yellow tint" problem on the iMacs was not a defect because color variations in LCD screens were normal and acceptable. Uh, sorry. But to graphics designer? No, they are not. And given graphics design has been a Mac stronghold, that was incredibly lame for them to even try to convince customers of that one.

* Apple never admitted that the Mighty Mouse had a design problem that caused the scroll ball to stop scrolling in one or more directions after just a couple of months of use. Even though there are thousands of reports on the Internet from users complaining about this problem.

Lets be honest here. Apple really does have a history of denying problems, even when they are obvious. Only to finally cave to pressure and address them after getting really bad press, and sometimes even class action lawsuits started against them.